by Every week, #TuesdayNewsday brings you a weekly whip around of the wargaming world >>>
This Week’s Headline:
There’s an interesting article about a recent wargame in Poland run by their national defense staff, that came out with some dreadful conclusions. Hell, Poland already fields 3 different MBTs (leftover T72s, second-hand Leos, co-designed K2PL tanks (with the ROKs), and now that article’s author thinks they need to buy M1A2SEP3’s? Mumblesomethingprofessionalsstudylogistics*somethingorother…
Well, turns out that’s not quite the whole story, as the players in the wargames had a variety of bad operational constraints put on them by the country’s civilian leadership. It might’ve been intentional, to hamstring the military leadership in an internal power struggle, or it might’ve been unintentional but well-meaning (how often have we seen that?) and based on expected public sentiment (defend forward or defend in depth?).
You need to hit Google Translate to follow-up with this Polish article about the exercises, but it puts a very different spin on everything. It also shows what happens when every ‘wargame’ is treated as a win/lose proposition, instead of considering that it could be about concept exploration, data collection, rehearsals, or any number of other purposes.
It also shows what happens when people apply a very narrow hobbyist viewpoint to wargames used for professional purposes. This paradigm was also manifested in a recent Wavell Room article by Sally Davis. Sally’s focus was on diversity in professional wargaming and along the way she noted that not all wargames are played for win/lose purposes, but the responses to the article clearly demonstrated that there’s no shortage of people out there that can’t separate the differences in practitioner wargame usage from their very narrow conceptions.
We’ve talked about this before, and no doubt will again, but it continues to reiterate the point that while the tools might look similar, and have some crossover utility, the Venn diagram between the pro/hobby wargaming worlds probably doesn’t overlap as much as some think.
Newly Released This Week:
- Compass Games continue their new-release tear, with The Doomsday Project: Episode One, The Battle For Germany heading out the door at the end of this week.
- The PDF-only For Whom the Dice Tolls is a minis game about the Spanish Civil War, and is now available. There are some additional free downloads at the announcement site.
- Paizo has released a bunch of enhancements to their Starfinder series, including these quick-ref cards for alien races. KOBOLDS IN SPAAAAAAACE!
News From The Wargame Industry:
- A good read on “fifth platoons” of African-American soldiers in White units in WW2 from Avalanche Press and their upcoming Black Panthers expansion for PanzerGrenadier.
- Paradox Games has March of the Eagles on sale for $4, but only for a few more days.
- S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is Manila ’45: The Stalingrad of the Pacific as the US forces fight to retake the Philippines from the Japanese invaders.
- Disimula Edizioni is down to about 50 copies of From Salerno to Rome. You gotta email them to get it, though.
- Matrix Games has an interesting article highlighting the Czechoslovakian military for the Armored Brigade games.
Newly Launched This Week:
- Tiny Epic Dungeons from Gamelyn Games is on Kickstarter, which means that between when we typed this, and when you read it, it will have doubled its current pledge total. Maybe tripled.
- It’s not new this week, but Hexagon are taking preorders on Great War Commander for a projected March shipping date.
- If you missed the Kickstarter, Columbia Games are still taking preorders on Rommel in the Desert.
- Aces of Valor from Legion Wargames will be going straight to production, but they’re offering a preorder price for a limited window, too, so you can save $20.
- Do you need some random NPCs for your games of The Fantasy Trip? Here’s a collection that’s up on Kickstarter right now, and already past its minimum funding and into the stretch goals. The campaign is built around a series of themed books of NPCs, like “Rookies” and “Wizards”.
- Europa Simulazioni has El Gran Capitan on preorder, if you want to refight the Italian Wars of the 16th century. The maps are gorgeous, but the counters might be a little busy for some tastes.
- You can still get in on the pre-orders of Phalanx Games’ all-of-WW2-in-90-minutes game Total Domination.
New from the Dragoons:
- RMN decided to light the world on fire with his rebuttal to Harold Buchanan’s archetypes of wargamers from the latest C3i Magazine.
- Project Quatre Bras continues
- Saturday Night Fights tackled Lasalle 2
- The AAR of part III, which was released IInd because part II is coming with part V (just go with it)
- Our playthru of The White Tribe is up to part 3
- A quirk of the calendar allowed us to record a special episode of Mentioned in Dispatches in the middle of the afternoon, which got Bawb dialed in from the far Northeast corner of civilization.
- Oh yeah, last Thursday was #UnboxingDay
Something From Our Partners:
- Moe has thawed out and has an interview with Rob Oren on Whiskey Charlie on 2/23.
- Ardwulf decided to talk about unplayed games on his Monday counter clipping stream. We feel seen.
- RMN digs into the Chinese Navy on his blog.
The Professional Wargaming World:
- The next GUWS seminars: Why Games Work: Roleplaying, Games and Simulations as an Educational Tool (2/22) and Counterfire: Using Board Games as Training Tools (3/2)
- Previous Mentioned in Dispatches guest Sally Davis has no time for your excuses and she’s done being polite about it.
This Week on Six Degrees of Radio:
A look at some great music from the past 40-odd years, with stories about the different songs.
- Metal Monday: Ladies & Gentlemen by Saliva
- Begging You by Stone Roses
- Domino by Van Morrison
- Mega Multi Media Hero by The Uninvited
That’s all for this week!
Be sure to drop by our forums and join the fun, and next Tuesday we’ll drop some more news on you.
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